CPS 'officers' testifying before the Board meeting all have zero Chicago teaching experience and less than one year at central office
Back in the day when a teacher had to work six years, get a master's degree, and pass some stringent examinations to work in the central office of the Chicago Public Schools, the one thing every teacher could count on was that the men and women who were bossing them around actually knew something about the realities of classrooms — at least during the previous years prior to their elevation to central posts and higher salaries. But anyone paying close attention to the current crop of "officers" occupying the heights of power in the third largest school system in the USA might have noted that none of them knows anything about working in a Chicago classroom for even so little time as one school year, from hot September to hotter June.
And no more clearly was the absurdity of the current approach to public school management in Chicago more on display that at the March 28, 2012 meeting of the Chicago Board of Education, when three major policies were presented to the seven members of the Board in Power Point format by four CPS officials none of whom knows anything about teaching in the real world of Chicago. The replacement of those who knew what it was like by those who worship at the altar of "data" and who are favorites of the corporate executives who are trying to take over public education reached a kind of apogee at that Board meeting. Not one of the people presenting the policies (which were subsequently approved by a vote of the seven members of the board) knows anything about Chicago or its public schools.
The four are Jean-Claude Brizard, Chief Executive Officer, Noemi Donoso, Chief Education Officer, Tim Cawley, Chief Administrative Officer, and Oliver Sicat, Chief Portfolio Officer. One year ago, none of them was working in the real public schools of Chicago (two were hundreds of miles away, working in other cities) and none can claim to be eligible or qualified to teach or administer in any other school district in Illinois except the deregulated version of reality currently know as CPS — Chicago Public Schools.
